In a Mountain's Heart
by Arkenn
Summary: Ruby has searched high and low for an old friend lost in battle. She stands atop a chilly peak looking into the maw of a mountain and wonders whether or not she has the strength to continue. She pushes on, broken and tired, unknowing of what will await her at the end of the line. (Oneshot)


**AN:** 'Howling at the Moon' adds some context to the story, but really this can be read on its own.

Enjoy—

 **Ruby Rose:**

An unnatural wind pushed its way through the maw of darkness which opened in front of the young Huntress. The air was fettered with an unknown stench, warm like the exhalations of a leper, thick like puss. Ruby faced it with a wince, pulling her cloak closer to her as much against the biting cold of the mountain side as the foul air. She was standing abreast a cliff that ringed Mount Oslo, third in a chain of five successively higher peaks which crowned Draco, the continent north of Mistral. At this altitude the air was naturally dry, cold, and scarce, contrasting against whatever exhalations were coming from the crag.

In front of her was the offending orifice of granite. Where the road atop the cliff ended it did not taper into the air, instead it pierced into a cave which she had been told was made of flesh, that it lived. That it was the mouth of the mountains and that when it spoke the entire continent shifted.

She trudged forwards, her mind blank, her body tired. She was whipped by cold winds at her sides and buffeted by the gasps of the dead mountain in front of her. Tired, disoriented, only the wind's whispers in her ears reminding her that she was to push forward, not back to camp, nor off the cliff and into the sweet oblivion of a hundred-foot drop.

As she stepped through the curtain black she thought morosely of home, of friends. She had set off on her own to find what had been lost, to search for things that were no longer within her grasp. Her choice was to give up whatever dignity she had to beg to be shipped to foreign lands, to follow the footsteps of the nomads which knew the route from one hellish place to another. It was a choice to pretend that she knew what she could do when she found what she was looking for.

The air is now unmistakable moist, like she was wandering through the jungle in some untamed wilderness. Slipping between cracks in the cave she touched the stones. Warm, dripping. She ignored the sense of revulsion that crept from her fingertips to her stomach, willing down illness and fear, and pressed forwards. Three months ago she would not have been able to slide through some of these spaces, only hard travel and lack of food thinning her to the point that she could slip through the maze. She found a path, once or twice, that lead her astray, farther from the stillborn heart of the mountain.

How did she know?

She pondered that question several times, every day since she left Beacon, every moment she fought, every time she wept. How did she know where she was going?

So she squeezed and she sucked and she pushed, forcing her way through the untouched cavities and arteries of the cave. Without err she wound her way towards the central ventricle, never stepping away from the path she saw in her mind, or felt in her heart, or was projected by god into her mind. She was blind, from the darkness or the miasma she didn't know. But she never tripped, never miss stepped, she simply moved. Maybe, just maybe, she didn't even breathe.

She finally broke through, her eyes unshaded by the tomblike atmosphere. She raised a hand to touch her own forehead, testing the moisture there, wondering if it was her sweat against her brow or the residue of the cave. How much time had she spent forging a path? How would she ever know?

Her hand dropped, as did her heart, thoughts of finality clouding her mind as the map eluded her. She knew not where to go, but stepped on anyways. Finished with that living forest of rock she, with the help of the break in the ceiling above, could see the white hill in front of her. She raised her head to see the top, but there was naught but the edge of the plateau, and a jingling of metal.

Finding the slope that traced the mound's edge lazily she trudged on, her eyes glued to the smooth white stone beneath her feet. Every few steps she saw a piece of carapace, a torn shred of a Grimm who had been captured. She had heard the stories, braced for what she might see, but tears still welled in her eyes every step she took.

The Grimm had been skinned alive. Blades had shorn through the smooth white exterior and pilled slabs of armor off of the beast, discarding them on the steps. A piece of the shoulder, a large strip off of the back, a finger… All discarded, some with red pulsing in crevices where the armor had been peeled off hastily.

She could not tell, even halfway up the slope, whether or not what she wanted to find would be here. The mass of carapace was too deformed, too crumpled and erratic to determine what it belonged to. Without markings and form, they were little more than scraps of skin discarded as the torturer had made their way up the slope, as Ruby did now. She wondered as she stopped and reached down, picking up a piece which looked like it had been on the jaw, what this felt like to the Grimm. Something so old and jaded to the world, protected by its armor and through it given tranquility, what it was like to feel again. Which was worse, being dragged through this place immobile and without control over the self, or the flaying? Or was it feeling, in some place like this, what truly pained them the most?

She reached the top, but the answer to that question did not readily present itself.

Instead she saw the broken form of a monster.

Two marble pillars stood ten feet apart, thick metal rings driven into them which were chained around the slabs once more. They were designed with the intent to keep even the fiercest of monsters restrained until the marble turned to dust or the mountain itself collapsed into nothing. Strung to it with chain and twine was an unrecognizable mass of black. It was slumped forwards, chest barely moving in unbreathing agony while its arms heaved against the unforgiving rock. The chain barely made a noise, the Grimm barely making any either, both sounds being absorbed in the great silence of the room.

Ruby stepped forwards, a half step, the sort of movement which is at once both fearful and resolute. She took that step and the beast lunged against its bounds, throwing itself forwards, an inhuman screech escaping its bound mouth as its blinded eyes glowed. It thrust with its legs against the ground and using all of its inhuman strength to move just an inch further forward, to the sweet, sweet temptation…

Ruby let out a shaky sigh, her brow furrowed. The beast she was looking at was trying desperately, hopelessly, to impale its chest on the end of a spear. In front of it, a fair ways to her left and ahead, a long halberd was stuck in the ground, its hilt lodged deep while the spear tip was angled at the Grimm's chest. Even with the full strength of the Beowolf behind it, the Monster was inches away, unable to claim sweet release from its torment.

Ruby wondered absently whether or not it had been thrust into action because she had arrived, or whether it rallied its strength at random, and she had happened across it while it was trying again, for god-knows how many times since it had been strung up.

She had heard of places like this, seen them for herself. The dark places where Humans and Faunus took their revenge out on the creatures Grimm. Locations where souls had been slaughtered mercilessly and their souls still hung onto the corners of shadows and within crevasses. For Grimm who were unable to escape, but too old or strong to die naturally of the Fade, it was a living hell. Brought to thirst unquenchable by the scent of suffering and without the fair protection of their armor they were broken. Thirst which no water could sate, hunger which no gulp of air could satisfy, abrasion of the mind that no salve could heal. And they were left to rot in insanity.

And such was the fate of the Wolf. It was unable to die, unable to free itself without manually tearing its own arms off. With no recourse it had to find another way to end its suffering, and the irony of it was not lost on Ruby. Impaled on the Halberd of all things.

She watched it in silence as it thrust forwards, its back arched like a bow as it tried feebly to thrust itself out of the world without luck. She did not have Crescent Rose with her, so she could not end it herself, nor did she have any tool with which to pull the Grimm free of its bindings.

So she approached.

Every step that she took the Grimm seemed to flail harder, flinching against the approach of something it remembered but could neither see, nor feel, nor describe. She stood right in front of it, between the monster and the steel point, and it calmed. It pulled back as far as it could from the huntress, seemingly by some instinct or logic which hadn't been lost to the madness. It was still then, slung backwards, as if its immobility would somehow allow it to fade from the mind of the Huntress.

And so they stood, the Huntress and the sorry remains of a Beowolf.

Waiting, perhaps, to die.


End file.
